Juxtapose
by tastewithouttalent
Summary: "The maid outfit looks better on Sakuraba than it does on Ootawara." Sakuraba loses the penalty game, and Takami is appreciative.
It's somewhat difficult to watch Ootawara play.

It's not that he's playing poorly. In actual fact his play style seems completely unaffected by the frills on the apron he's wearing, or the elastic of the stockings around his thighs, or the heels on the shoes on his feet. It's just that for whatever indecency Ootawara regularly commits during Oujou's practices - and there are many occasions Takami can call to mind - somehow an absence of clothing is more tolerable to bear than the juxtaposition of the maid outfit he's currently wearing and his typical behavior.

"Maybe we should call off the penalty game," Takami suggests in an undertone to Shoji, who is still considering Ootawara with remarkable dignity. It's only the more impressive for how unpleasant the sight itself is; Takami is flinching with preemptive embarrassment for Sakuraba, who has yet to emerge from the changing room where he and Ootawara were rushed at the start of the public practice. "I'm sure we can work out an alternate payment for the loss of the-"

The screams cut him off. There's a tide of them, a rising wail of excitement pointedly feminine in tone; Takami loses the train of his thought for the piercing whine of the sound, all his attention brought swinging around to determine the cause of the agonizingly shrill note being hit by every female voice within fifty meters.

Then he sees Sakuraba, and every thought in his head evaporates at once.

The maid outfit looks better on Sakuraba than it does on Ootawara. Much better. _Much_ better. Sakuraba's walking stiffly, his hands curled into fists at his sides and his cheeks flushed with embarrassment, but even so his strides are even, the heels of his shoes hitting the ground with a rhythm Takami imagines he can hear even over the girlish screams emanating from all around them. The sash of the apron is cinched tight around the narrowest point of Sakuraba's waist, the ruffles at the shoulders only serve to make him look even broader than he is, and with each step he takes his hips sway by an inch, his gait forced into a more rhythmic motion than usual by the heels of his shoes. Bad enough that the sleeves fit tight against the line of his biceps, bad enough that his hair is ruffling gold against the lacy cap, but then Takami's gaze makes it past the edge of the skirt, and he sees Sakuraba's legs, and all the air still in his lungs leaves his chest in a groan thankfully inaudible under the crescendo of excitement from the rest of Sakuraba's audience.

Sakuraba has nice legs. Sakuraba has _very_ nice legs. Takami has known this for years, has spent more than a little time admiring them in the magazine spreads he used to buy from the convenience store and, much more recently, from the more personal perspective of hands-on experience. But between the black straps of the shoes and the ruffled edge of the skirt Sakuraba's legs seem to go on forever, clean lines interrupted only by the edge of the stocking clinging halfway up the flex of his thighs. There's a scant inch of skin left bare between the hem of the skirt and the top of the stockings, and Takami has heard classmates admire this particular phenomenon with respect to girls but he's never before understood the appeal quite so thoroughly. Even the flex of Sakuraba's calves enforced by the heels of his shoes isn't enough to draw Takami's attention down for more than a few seconds; his eyes are caught in that gap of skin, his lips parted on the desire to press his mouth against the span and mark the pale skin with the bruised-in shape of his lips.

The shouting is continuing, Takami is aware distantly, the shrieking from the girls giving way to more masculine jeers and shouting; he sees Sakuraba turn, his eyes going wide on panic as a football flies towards him, sees his hands come up instinctively to catch the familiar shape of it. Sakuraba looks overwhelmed, is yelling something - a plea for mercy from the wave of footballs being thrown at him, maybe - but Takami still can't focus on what's happening except for the rumple of Sakuraba's skirt against his thighs when he shifts. His imagination is reeling, throwing up images too fast for him to process: his mouth against the texture of those stockings, that skirt pushed up around Sakuraba's hips to bare whatever it is he's wearing underneath, those legs wrapped around Takami's waist and those fingers digging into his hair. Takami has no idea what face he's making, no conception of how obvious the heat in his eyes must be; he can barely think to breathe, has no hope at all of pulling himself back into composure.

And then the toss comes.

Takami doesn't even see where it comes from. He's not watching the audience; whoever threw it must have intended it as a joke, anyway, from the absurd height of the arc it's cutting through the air. It's high above the first wave of tosses that came through, standing outlined as a clear shadow against the bright of the sky, and Takami can see Sakuraba notice it, can see his head snap up to track the arc of the ball through the air. Takami hisses a sharp inhale, anticipation crystalline on his tongue and aching in his chest; and Sakuraba jumps, his entire body arcing up into a long, perfect silhouette against the sky. His arms come up into the air, his head tilts back to track the ball, and for just a moment Takami isn't seeing anything at all of what he's wearing, doesn't care whether it's a skirt or a football uniform or the plain t-shirt Sakuraba wears when they're doing extra practice in the evenings. There's just Sakuraba, haloed into perfection against the sky, and all the breath leaves Takami's lungs at the same time that he loses his grip on the clipboard in his hands. It falls to his feet, smacks audibly against the ground, and still Takami can't look away, can't blink his vision clear of the afterimage of Sakuraba printed against the sky.

"Here," comes a voice, and something hits Takami's chest with enough force that he lifts a hand to catch it even before he can collect himself enough to look away from where Sakuraba is landing from his jump. Shoji's pressing the clipboard back against his chest, eyeing him with the same unreadable expression he wore for Ootawara. "You feeling all right, Takami? You look flushed."

"Ah," Takami says, and tightens his fingers on the clipboard as his cheeks go darker, self-consciousness stepping in to take over where the breathless heat of desire ends. "Yes. Of course. I'm fine." He clears his throat hard, and ducks his head, and moves away to another part of the field, where he has less of an audience for the tremor he can't stop from quivering in his hands.

He doesn't manage to take many notes for the rest of the practice.


End file.
